Ask HN: Why do we use depth first search on comment threads in HN?

[robertclaus]

When I read the comments on a HN post I generally want to get a sense for how the community is reacting to the content and whether I missed any interesting implications. However, almost always I have to scroll through a long comment thread about one response before seeing another separate response. Is there a setting for this or a reason I'm overlooking that HN shows comments this way?

[JohnFen]

If you click on the little [-] next to a comment, it will collapse that comment and all the replies to it. Then you don't have to scroll past them.